Google Moves To Lift Gag Order On NSA Surveillance

Google has asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) to recognize the company’s First Amendment right to speak up about its role in the National Security Agency’s (NSA) online surveillance program, seeking to override the Justice Department’s order to keep data requests secret.

Specifically, Google wants FISC approval to publish “(1) the total number of [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant] requests it receives, if any; and (2) the total number of users or accounts encompassed within such requests.” Essentially, Google wants to tell its users exactly how many times the NSA has looked at Google data and how many users’ data the agency gobbled up.

These numbers are not classified, and Google’s motion does not clarify the legal reasoning behind Justice and the FBI’s position that publishing them would be illegal. Regardless, it’s within FISC’s power to declare the information to be protected by the First Amendment, which would allow Google to publish them alongside other unclassified information about national security requests it gets.

FISC proceedings, which also approve the FISA warrants that require Google and other tech companies to comply with PRISM, are secret, so following the progress of Google’s motion will be difficult. A 2008 FISC ruling held that Yahoo’s Fourth Amendment objections to cooperating with the PRISM program were “overblown.“